


carry on, be brave

by Steel



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steel/pseuds/Steel
Summary: Julie is found on Eros by the Rocinante crew, malnourished but uninfected, and joins their crew.





	carry on, be brave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CypressSunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/gifts).



Julie opens her eyes, and at first she thinks she’s dreaming.

But bright lights assault her, making her squeeze her eyes shut again. She grips the armrests of her couch, tears forming. Fingernails digging into the cushioned gel, breath hitching in her throat.

At first she thinks she’s weeping because of the brightness — hadn’t she destroyed all the screens in her room? — but then her memory returns. It’s not like how the stories describe it at all, memory slamming into you hard enough to take your breath away. No, it’s a slow and insidious crawl, one memory drifting into her awareness after the next. But they pack into her brain all together, so tightly that her thoughts feels crowded.

The _Anubis_. Her father’s people. That blue — _something_. Dawes.

God, Dawes _abandoned_ her.

She remembers seeing him on the screens, remembers grabbing the lamp and hurling it at his smug face in a fit of rage. She doesn’t remember much after that, but the boiling rage lurking just beneath her skin is strong enough to choke her.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

Someone’s standing in the doorway. She’s tall, with curly hair tied back and a jumpsuit that’s seen better days. A Belter jumpsuit, not a uniform or anything. Even though she offers Julie a smile as she enters, there’s a guarded look in her eyes.

Julie glares at her, fingers digging deeper into the gel armrests. “Where am I?”

The woman checks something near her — an auto-doc, she realizes. “You’re aboard the _Rocinante_. We found you on Eros.”

Julie’s eyes flicker back to her, narrowing. “How’d you find me there?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, eyes on the auto-doc. No Belter ship Julie’s ever been on had an auto-doc, which only makes her suspicion grow.

“Fred Johnson,” she eventually says.

“You’re OPA?”

“No.” Something hardens in the woman’s expression, but she pulls back and puts her hands in her pockets. “But he needed something from us, so we agreed to go to Lionel Polanski’s last coordinates.”

“To the _Anubis_?” Cold fear washes over Julie, her rage all but forgotten. “There was something there, something—”

“We know,” the woman cuts her off, and Julie can tell by her voice that she does know. That maybe she saw exactly what Julie saw. “We destroyed the ship.”

Julie heaves a sigh of relief, sinking into the couch. “Then it’s over.”

She stares at her, swallowing. “No,” she says, voice quiet but firm. “It’s far from over.”

* * *

Julie finds out later that she’d almost withered away from dehydration, malnutrition, and plenty of other things from being trapped on the _Anubis_ for so long. It’s a relief, because she remembers feeling nauseous and weak, a part of her dreading that she was infected with whatever was on the ship. She hadn’t expected to survive, not when she hadn’t heard from Dawes in weeks. Had even come to terms with it, almost.

_Almost_.

Eros wasn’t so lucky, though.

She can’t stop going through all the information they have. It isn’t much. Her father’s arrogance knows no bounds, but she’d never — she’d never _dreamed_ he’d attack an entire station full of people, spread a biological weapon like that. It makes something twist in her gut, something far worse than thinking Dawes had abandoned her in her time of need.

No one aboard the _Rocinante_ is OPA, but they’re heading to Tycho Station. There’s nowhere else to go, not when their ship is a stolen — legitimately salvaged, their pilot insists — Martian corvette. Julie isn’t sure what to make of the crew, but she hooks into newsfeeds and finds out all about the _Canterbury_ and James Holden.

It’s a lot to take in.

She isn’t sure what to make of Fred Johnson being behind her rescue, either. She’s learned enough about Belters by now to know that, even within the OPA, they’re splintered. Just thinking about Dawes makes her chest boil, but she doesn’t think she’ll hop a shuttle and head out to Ceres anytime soon.

Even though she really, _really_ wants to.

But there are bigger things at stake, and right now she feels like sticking with the _Rocinante_ is her best bet to figure things out. Their crew is certainly strange, made up of two Earthers, two Belters and a Martian. James Holden questioned her not long after she woke up, but has avoided her since. He strikes her as a man with a burden he doesn’t want to dump on others. Naomi Nagata is friendly with her when they talk, but doesn’t seek out her company. Amos Burton is a complicated man, open without being open and talking without being talkative. Alex Kamal is one of the chattiest people she’s ever met, but reveals very little that actually matters.

And then there’s Joe Miller. She hasn’t had a proper conversation with him yet, but he stares at her when they cross paths in the galley in a way she can’t describe. It’s not a predatory look — she’s used to those kind of looks — but sometimes it feels like he’s staring _through_ her instead of _at_ her.

Maybe he had family on Eros. Or maybe he knows she’s connected to it, knows that the attack on Eros is her father’s doing. If he does, she’s surprised he hasn’t said anything yet. But she supposes the truth will come out sooner or later, once Johnson corners her. She’ll tell him, of course. Johnson might head a different OPA faction, but he’s still OPA. Their mission objective had always been to find out what sort of weapon her father was making.

She just wishes he hadn’t _used_ it.

Julie’s fingers curl around her tea, her throat tightening as her eyes mist over. She’s long since come to terms with the sort of man her father is, but that doesn’t make _knowing_ he destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives any better. God, nothing would make that any better.

Footsteps approach from somewhere behind her and she hastily wipes away her tears, peering over her shoulder. It’s Miller, his greasy hair hanging limply in front of his eyes, his button-up shirt wrinkled and very obviously slept in. There’s something worn about him, worn and _tired_ , like he’s seen a little too much.

They’ve _all_ seen too much, she thinks.

“Hey.” He’s looking at her expectantly, or maybe even hesitantly. Just standing there, feet fidgeting. Like he’s trying to work the courage up to saying something, but can’t find the words.

“Hey,” she says back, because she doesn’t know what else to say. An empty greeting feels too little, but carrying on a conversation feels too much.

He finally settles for shoving a hand into a pocket and ducking his head as he enters the galley, grabs a mug. While he fixes himself something to drink, his other hand makes a gesture. She recognizes as something along the lines of _stop dawdling and get to the point_ , or at least that’s how Wan explained it to her. There are so many nuances to Belter language, to all the gestures that compliment it, that she’s barely scratched the surface.

“Good to see you up and about,” he finally says, raising his head a little to look at her.

Which she realizes is more or less the same thing he said when they first crossed paths, just with less surprise and more warmth. She feels her mouth twitch and covers it with a hand. It’s not that she wants to laugh at him really, but at the situation. At how, even after all the horrors of what her father and his scientists unleashed upon the system — upon the _universe_ — she can still find it in her to laugh about something as mundane as a worn old Belter trying to make conversation.

“Yeah, it’s—” she starts to say, then decides to change her train of thought mid-sentence. “I’m feeling a lot better. Not perfect, but—” She shrugs because nothing is perfect anymore, and hasn’t been for _years_ , but who’s counting? Not her. “What about you?”

There it is again, that hesitation. Like he wants to ask her so many things, but just can’t find the words. It makes her think about him knowing her part in all this again, and a part of her wishes he’d just come out and _say_ it already, to get this over and done with.

But she can’t blame him for hesitating, not when he and Holden were actually _on_ Eros when it was all happening. He saw firsthand what her father created, what her father _unleashed_. She wonders if she can even articulate the horror and revulsion she feels at being related to a madman like her father, and her mouth presses into a thin line.

“Not perfect either, but better,” he says, and there’s a strange weight to his words. There’s a strange look in his eyes too, a longing that’s there one moment and gone the next. “Definitely better.”

Julie frowns a little, wondering if she wants to follow that thread. But Miller raises his mug in her direction, dips his head in a little nod, and leaves the galley before she can gather her thoughts.

What the hell was _that_ all about?

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't get the chance to play around with the idea as much as I wanted to due to IRL reasons, but the more I think about it the more I'd love to make this a multi-chaptered fic sometime down the road, so thank you very much for infecting me with this idea!
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


End file.
